Loren's Spirit Keeps us Going

Remembering Loren.
Raining on Irina's flowers
  in Starobelsk, Ukraine. 

It's been eight years since my brother Loren's last hike, on May 23, 2010. He died on the trails of northern Florida along the Aucilla River.  His hiking friends from the Tallahassee Trails Association found him and ran for help.  It was too late. Loren's spirit flew up and away, into the great beyond. I like to think an Eagle flew overhead at that very moment, like the one he spotted at St. Marks Preserve the day our Mom died at the end of March 2003. 

I was in Ukraine when that eagle flew over the Aucilla River, so far away. A very early morning call, connected through Peace Corps headquarters in Kyiv. My sister's voice, crying.  The sad messenger of the saddest news. So sudden, so unexpected. Our sister Andy, living in Tallahassee, felt her heart skip a beat when two police officers, in solemn faces, appeared at her door. "I knew something was wrong the minute I saw them," she said. The shock still lingers, for both of us.   

We were adults, retired, getting up there in age, but we weren't ready for our little brother's death at 63 years old.  Too young. Same age that our dad died.  Loren wasn't ready either. His autobiography about growing up with Asperger's Syndrome was about to come out. He had poured his heart and soul into it. He had all his environmental and political work awaiting him.  He had so much reading to do. Loren always surrounded by books, an enduring image. He wanted to travel, too, return to his beloved upstate New York, to the Rochester area where we grew up, to the Finger Lakes, the Adirondacks, maybe a trip to Mexico with his sisters. Instead, Loren was taken on a different trip, one we were powerless to redirect.   

Whenever Andy and I rant about the news of the day, which is a lot now, we miss Loren's voice. "If only Loren were here," we say.  We want to hear his take on things, learn new ways of looking at them from his vast knowledge about everything on Earth. 

But Loren is somewhere else. I'm not sure where. I hope he is hiking in the cosmic hologram of another dimension, beyond global warming and the desecration of the Earth he fought so hard to protect. I hope he's in a place without hate, guns, war and violence, his Aspie self aglow in the warm embrace of the goddess. 

When I think I hear his voice, because I want to so badly, he is calm. Like a serene Buddha. He seems to have a  kind of lofty perspective on humans doing their thing on earth. He seems to know that our ideals will survive and save us, as they always have. That the arc of history is toward justice, as MLK taught us.  It's not a raging voice; it's a quiet voice of compassion and empathy. I see the light from a lovely soul at peace with himself and the world. “I've done my part," he seems to say. "You guys have work to do. Don't stop now, until we meet again.”

A POEM FOR LOREN. 

The Dead, by the wonderful poet Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate

The dead are always looking down on us they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats
of heaven as they row through eternity.

They watch the top of our heads moving on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them.

Which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait like parents for us to close our eyes.